Mike Sigel is a pool player who enjoys his cigars.

Proudly toting rifle-sized leather
satchels over their shoulders, they give pause to shoppers along tony
Madison Avenue. A hint of cocky mischief juices their steps as they
hop into a cab and hunt for an action room on New York's West Side. In
some dim hotel ballroom, pool shooters might be gods manipulating
spheres, but on the pavement outside they are anonymous.

Mike Sigel may be the most gifted of the anonymous. As New Yorkers
seek refuge from the close August heat, Sigel is indoors at New York's
Roosevelt Hotel, coolly performing on a slate stage stretched with
green wool. The U.S. Open Pocket Billiard Tournament unfolds in the
Grand Ballroom. With a room full of players in coat and tie; this
gaslight-era expanse--with wraparound balcony etched in hand-sculpted
frieze and crystal chandeliers--is no River City dive perverting
family values. Not by a long shot. No, this is a kinder, gentler
parlor for the game of kings.

The game being played--straight pool--is recognized as the contest of
the most skillful. For pool purists, it is a welcome relief from the
bang-'em-and-hope nine-ball matches that draw all the attention these
days. The majority of the 40 million people who play pool each year
play eight ball and nine ball. Nine ball is a volatile
Nintendo-generation sprint; straight pool, a circuitous, thinking
man's marathon. With little luck or unpredictable nonsense, straight
requires that you call every shot, with the first player to pocket 150
balls winning.

But straight pool is also a dinosaur: promoters say it is too slow and
monotonous to work on television. If the truth be known, straight also
requires an array of skills that many nine-ball players don't possess
or are unwilling to cultivate.

So this U.S. Open tournament--held in a room where more than a dozen
world championships have been played--is a bridge to a rapidly
receding past. This may be the last straight tournament that men play
in for a long time. For Sigel that's a bad break: for 20 years he has
enjoyed his pool straight.

Invented in 1910, "straight" did not become the official
world-championship game until 1912. Straight pool grew out of two
games that are as long gone as ivory cue balls, "61-pool" and
"continuous." Continuous often dragged at a snail's pace, bogging down
in a series of defensive "safeties" each time a new rack began. Some
of these comatose contests lasted seven hours. To mercifully eliminate
the problem, Jerome Keogh--Irving Crane's mentor who, together with
Sigel and Crane, is one of three world champions to come from
Rochester, New York--suggested that the last ball of each rack be left
free to be used as a "break ball" for the next rack. This made for a
more offensive, crowd-pleasing game with higher runs. He named his new
game "14 racked, 1 ball free," which became 14.1 continuous or
straight pool. It is a game that combines shooting skill as well as
cue ball control and defense.

Straight pool is also the game Sigel grew up with.

At the Roosevelt, Sigel hunches over a table, plying his
trade. Slightly built, like a matador, and looking too small for his
black cummerbund, Sigel seems dwarfed by the vast and elegant
surroundings of the room. But at the moment he is oblivious to the
Baroque architectural refinements. He is stalking prey; picking off
"balls in space," as he describes a spread of colored constellations
and combinations that form. He steers clear of loose clusters, those
black holes that can absorb a cue ball and stop a run. Sigel's cue
ball, moving as if on a marionette's strings, seems to always find its
destination. Surging toward 150 points, he floats the cue ball out of
troubled areas into wide open green. Like a hunter leaving a forest in
order to fire back into it, Sigel likes to roll away from
traffic--center table--and snipe at the pack. Though Mike Zuglan is a
dangerous opponent (he would run 148 balls later this same evening),
Sigel has already sprayed 70 consecutively with the ease of a marksman
powdering clay birds. The rhythm is textbook: he strokes once, twice,
hesitates and fires. Each staccato "click" of the balls, preceding a
thump of the pocket, echoes up to the balcony.

Fifteen balls can lay on a 40.5 square-foot surface in an infinite
variety of ways. No problem. Sigel's metagame simplifies position play
by reducing it to several principles. Like mentally dividing the cue
ball into "vertical and horizontal planes" to apply english. But like
any truly great player his real gift is seeing.

He often perceives his next 14 shots in order. Sometimes he sees even
more. Sigel can look at a chaotic spread of balls and trace
sequences. Were Sigel a chess master with this same sequential acumen,
he might be accorded the status of genius. But despite employing
chesslike planning, plus an added element of eye-hand coordination,
pool players have never received comparable respect. Perhaps this is
because pool players are often perceived as ne'er-do-wells; men who
squander their talents, stay up all hours and embrace values counter
to social conventions.

So advanced is Sigel's understanding of position that video narrators
Bill Staton and Grady Matthews--with a century of pool experience
between them--frequently miscalculate Sigel's next few shots in their
narration, much less how he'll run the rest of the rack. In Sigel's
life, position is everything.

And sitting is his opponent's position. As Sigel runs his total to
112, Zuglan sinks farther and farther into what insiders call the
"electric chair." Pool offers no defense against an opponent running
the table: you can't intercept a pass or block a shot or make a great
running catch. You can only sit and hope. Zuglan's lone miscue was
leaving a ball free on the opening break more than an hour ago. Sigel
drilled the table-length shot, kicked a few balls loose and condemned
Zuglan to pool purgatory.

A thunderous standing ovation follows Sigel's 150th point. In a
postgame interview, Sigel acknowledges that this first perfect game in
U.S. Open history was "amazing."

Why talk? By 15, he had already discovered that filling pockets kept
his pockets full. At times he hit the road. "My traveling partner used
to find a pool hall and plant a custom one-piece cue in the afternoon,
so I didn't have to walk through the doors at night with a two-piece."
He smirks. His choice turf was the Ridge Billiard Lounge in
Rochester. At 19, he ran 339 balls there. His mother, Ruth, knew of
his talent before then. But she wasn't thrilled.

Mike's father, Sidney, worked for an auto-parts company that received
its shipments by railroad. One day he discovered two damaged pool
tables on the freight train, brought them home and fixed them up. The
eight-foot table that he put in the garage became Michael's table. "At
six o'clock he'd finish dinner and sometimes play till six in the
morning when my husband was leaving for work,' Ruth recalls," shaking
her head.

"I didn't care for it too much; I would worry about drugs in the pool
room," Ruth recalls. "But Mike brushed tables to earn playing time,
and the owner watched him and drove him home at night."

Ruth eventually came around to it, although she still protested
occasionally. "A few times I got aggravated; he wouldn't go to Hebrew
school because he was too tired from playing pool nights, she says. "I
said, 'You must leave the house at 6:15 in the morning and you can't
come back until three.' Where else could he go but school? The pool
room didn't open until 11 A.M. I knew he loved it: He signed up for
college twice--Rochester and Brockport--but stopped each time. But I
never nagged him. Now I see his name and his picture and commercials
and The Color of Money [the pool film for which Sigel was
technical adviser]. When we see it, we get so hyped up. I'm more
excited than he is."

His father, Sidney, played with him for a while but grew tired of
racking up balls when Mike ran hundreds at a time.

Mike's resolve to turn pro began in the early '70s at the Johnson
City, Illinois, All-Around Tournament. There he studied the sultans of
straight--Joe Balsis, Steve Mizerak, Ray Martin, and Irving
Crane. "Before I went there, I thought these guys never missed. Before
I left, I said, 'I could beat him and him and him...'."

In 1979 he did. At 27, Sigel came to New York, still without a world
championship. But he won that year's World Straight Pool Tournament at
the Holiday Inn and headed home to Baltimore. "I put the trophy in the
passenger seat and I couldn't get the grin off my face for three
straight weeks." Then reality set in: local media treated him more
like a leper than a world champion. Television stations in Baltimore
said his achievement "wasn't newsworthy." "Newsworthy?" Sigel
mocks. "If I was the World Champion at tiddlywinks, I would have
gotten some coverage."

But when the world outside disappoints a player, he loses himself in
the world he knows best--the orderly universe of flat surface and
perfect spheres.

Sigel returned to that world with a vengeance. You have to go back to
Willie Mosconi's' 50s to find a decade as thoroughly dominated by a
player as Sigel dominated the '80s. At one point he was known as
"Mr. Final" due to his exploits in final matches--winning
approximately 85 of 95 tournaments in which he reached the final
match.

Sigel, now 39, has collected four World Straight Pool titles--more
than any active player--and at 36 was the youngest ever elected to the
Hall of Fame. It was an awful lot, awful soon.

Sitting at Tio Pepe's in Baltimore--his favorite restaurant in "the
whole world"--he relaxes, drawing on a cigar (he usually smokes
Garcia Y Vega Grenadas or Macanudo Prince Philips) after dinner,
blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. He waxes philosophical about his
career. "After the Hall of Fame induction, I remember thinking, 'What
will I do now?' It was hard." Interestingly, Sigel's game has weakened
since the time of the election. "I lost a little interest, had some
problems. It wasn't mechanical; it was mental. I just kind of got
bored with it and didn't do well in tournaments." Several months ago,
he separated from his wife, Chris.

Though Sigel has had several off years, he still managed to win a
one-pocket tournament--in which a player must sink all his balls in
one pocket--as well as nine-ball and straight pool tournaments last
year. He has won more than 100 tournaments in 20 years of pro play.

But among a cityscape of trophies in his Baltimore home, his proudest
is a mounted eight-pound bass he hooked in Mexico. He would as soon go
fishing as play pool. While casting into a pool re-energizes the body,
shooting tournament pool drains the spirit. "There's more pressure in
pool than any other sport," Sigel sighs. "In golf, if you're three
strokes ahead on the eighteenth hole, you can't lose."

In pool no lead is safe. "Once I had a 194-to-15 lead [in the
Rochester Classic against Jim Rempe]," Sigel recalls. "My cue ball got
tied up and Rempe ran 75." Rempe remembers that the audience members
had already left, their steps dinning in his ears as they exited
across the wood floor. Then Rempe launched a comeback. "It was like
the movie The Birds; the crowd came back one by one until the
room was full again." Sigel recalls, "I missed, and he ran another
110." He relives the annoyance all over again. "Game." In a world
where $50,000 can ride on a single stroke of the cue, casting for bass
has its place.

In the U.S. Open Final there was more pressure to contend with. First
Sigel had to cool his heels for two hours, hitting balls on an
anteroom practice table while he waited for the women's final to
end. "You're all showered and ready to go and then you have to wait. I
just wanted to get underway," Sigel recalls. After the women's final
ended, Jimmy Caras and Mosconi, both Hall of Famers, were introduced
to the standing-room-only crowd. If that wasn't enough, Mosconi sat
tableside, not five feet from Sigel's chair. On more than one
occasion, Mosconi's mere presence has made players miss.

But Sigel handles pressure better than any player. He jokes, often at
his own expense. "Oh, there's a great shot," he said sarcastically
after he rolled the cue ball down the table and out of position in an
early-round match. He vents; he gets through. The tournament pressure
that makes others wilt makes Sigel thrive. After running three
consecutive racks he returned to his chair. "Just like Willie showed
me," he cracked. It was a singular action for a player, because under
pressure most would be too self-involved to notice Christ three feet
from their nose. Mosconi, of course, did not teach Sigel; their
careers did not intersect. But Mosconi appreciated the kind words just
the same. He smiled, seeming to recall his own career in the figure of
Sigel before him.

And in the Open final match, Sigel prevented any Rochester-like
returns from the dead. Following Dallas West's opening break, Sigel
spotted a combination, smoked it and ran 29 balls before overshooting
a tough bank. He then fidgeted and kvetched in his chair as West
returned fire, running 40. Straight pool matches contain at least one
pivotal moment. This one had two.

First, following a scratch, Sigel ran 84, shooting ahead 112 to
40. Two racks later West--a two-time Open winner--eyed a seductive
do-or-die kiss shot. But Sigel left the cue ball beneath the triangle
so West had to carom off the side cushion to reach it. It misfired by
an inch. Sigel sprang from the chair and downed the last 38 balls,
winning 150 to 56. He not only won his six games but seared opponents
by a comically lopsided combined score of 900 to 328. After overcoming
some inconsistent play against low seeds, Sigel utterly dominated the
field. He even "beheaded" "Lite Beer" Mizerak, 150 to 28.

While his peers accord him the highest respect, few of them find his
table manners amusing. In a game with an unspoken but detailed code of
etiquette, Sigel chirps at balls, the moisture in the cloth,
unresponsive pool gods--anything. His chatter with the audiences who
crowd his table spices a dull match. For audiences, Sigel's games
become participatory theater. He once blamed an unfortunate roll on a
current of air caused by a couple stirring in the balcony.

"He's not happy unless he's complaining," says Bobby Hunter, the 1990
World Champion, smiling. "He's definitely a whiner," says Rempe,
Sigel's cue rival of some 20 years. "He complains about not getting
the rolls, but he's already gotten better rolls than any player in
history." Before departing, Rempe's face grows thoughtful and he
measures his words. "If I'm putting a lot of money on one shot, I want
Mike Sigel shooting it." "He's the Arnold Palmer of pool," says former
world champion Allen Hopkins. And Mizerak puts a cap on it: "Mike
Sigel is the best player breathing on earth."

As long as Mosconi draws breath, that estimate is probably
excessive. Mosconi utterly dominated pool for 17 years, winning 19 of
26 challenges and championships played between 1941 and 1956. But
Sigel would have won more than his four World Tournaments if they were
staged annually.

But they probably won't be. Straight pool is further threatened by
the separation of the men's tour from the Billiard Congress of
America. "The B.C.A. thinks they're the governing body of pool," says
Sigel, irritated. "They're not; the players are." One reason that the
top men are planning to avoid future U.S. Opens has to do with prize
money. At the Open, Sigel was handed a check for $9,700 after shooting
the lights out for an entire week. "The same money that Joe Balsis got
20 years ago," Sigel later complained. Indeed, in last year's AC-Delco
Bowling Classic, the third-place finisher received more; the
first-place finisher received $37,000. "We would play this year if
$50,000 was added to the prize money," Sigel says. But that won't
happen.